God Machine
by The Golden Gael
Summary: My second Titans fanfic. This one is about Raven, and her struggles against a new baddy who has kidnapped her.
1. Default Chapter

1.

Titan's Tower, night time. All were asleep after a long day of crime fighting. More than one of the Titan's had gone to bed nursing bruises given to them by Brother Blood and his latest class of rejects from the H.I.V.E. Robin especially took a good walloping, and so dispensed with his usual brooding and went straight to bed. Raven was the last to actually fall asleep, as she spent the time before bed meditating, suppressing the feelings of rage, of worry, of satisfaction. All the feelings that she felt when evil stuck its head around the corner. As she meditated, she tried desperately to forget about the dull pain in her shoulder, that little brat Jinx sent her headlong into a wall, then she crashed 50 odd feet to the ground....business as usual.

But by now, she to, had bedded down for the night. This was Titan Tower at its most peaceful, all its occupants had no trouble sleeping through the night, for they knew that there were extensive and elaborate security systems to keep watch while they slept. Security systems that were, until this night (and just once before that......kind of), impenetrable.

At the front door, a dark figure worked, silently pulling gadgets out of a backpack thrown over both shoulders. The main instrument he employed was an electro magnetic pulse generator, designed to knock out the electronic door locks and all surrounding video equipment for approximately five hours, he'd use it more than once on his way inside, knocking out video camera's and motion detectors as he went; it was an ingenious little device.

Its user, a man of average build, was encased entirely in black, wearing a black jump suit and a black mask, lacking even eye holes, forcing him to squint through the thin fabric. His eyes were good though, he knew his eyes were good, he knew that even through the mask in the dead of night, there was no way he could mess this up, he'd been planning it for too long.

The door lock clicked and slid open with no further resistance. The intruder, having studied the floor plans of the tower for weeks now, wasted no time in stealthily jogging towards his objective.

His breathing echoed into his ears off of the mask drawn in front of his face, but he was the only one awake to hear it; this he knew. He'd made a note to find out when it was the Titan's stopped their patrols of the city, and finally called it a night. Though he could never be sure they were all asleep, he'd seen them all return, and waited another hour before making his entrance. Since all the lights were off, and there was no noise coming from anywhere, he was getting more confident with every step that he'd picked the perfect time to invade Titan Tower, and that no one would disturb him.

He knew in his heart, they were all asleep.

He got to the bedrooms of the tower, there were five of them, and he'd memorized the order. The one he was looking for was down the second corridor on the left, and the treasure he was looking for lay beyond. He got out what he needed to conquer the bedroom door, which was a sliding door that responded to movement in front of it, but when it was locked it only worked from inside the room, so a little coaxing was required to gain entrance. He pulled from his pack a small device with an electronic scrambling program–designed to make the door think the hall was in fact the inside of the room, thus thinking his presence meant it was supposed to open–and placed it on the door. He punched a few numbers and it blinked to life, slowly calculating what needed calculating, and the door popped open. He grabbed the device back off the door as it slid and returned it to his pack. The whole process was a little louder than he would have liked, but he saw the occupant of the bed, and judging by movement and reaction, he'd not been heard. He walked calmly into the room, and on to his target.

He went back into his pack, pulling from it a large black bag and the most basic instrument he'd bothered to bring along, a stun gun. He looked at it for a moment with a smirk on his face, all the simplicity in the world, it was a wonder no one had tried it before. Sure, he'd modified it a little, upping the voltage in order to deliver a definite knockout, but essentially it was the simple stun gun that people bought for their own personal protection.

The bed's occupant stirred a little again, turning over on her side, letting her jaw length purple hair cascade over her face a little, and he knew he had to hurry or he would miss his chance. He walked up to the beds side and took position. Quickly, he planted a hand over her mouth, instantly waking her up but not letting her shout in surprise. Her eyes grew wide with surprise as she realised what was happening, but it was too late to do anything. A second later, white hot lightning shot through her body, as he planted the stun gun at the base of her neck. After a moment exposed to the current, her eyes closed and her body went limp.

She was out.

He put her in a sitting position and threw the bag over her head, slowly working it down until it was at her feet, then pulled a drawstring and closed the bag around her ankles, tying the access string off. He pulled her limp lifeless body up over his shoulder, and started the journey back outside, closing all the doors as he went. No evidence existed that showed he was ever there. He figured he'd have at least a days head start before someone in the tower noticed one of their own was MIA.

After all, no one would find it weird to not see Raven around.

Not for a while, anyway.

2.

Starfire awoke by stretching a crick out of her back, clearly the fight with H.I.V.E was going to be felt until at least lunch time. Nevertheless, it was going to be a good day. They'd shut down H.I.V.E again, and it would take weeks for Brother Blood and company to recover. That meant that today they would have a day off for a change, which suited Starfire (and, she imagined, the rest of the group as well) just fine. She dressed quickly and walked confidently out of her bedroom door, to greet what she hoped would be a sunny, sunny day.

When she got to the main hall, all were already awake, except, it appeared, Raven. No surprise there really, she was probably reading a book or meditating, in the quiet darkness of her own room. It was typical for her to stay in her room until someone went and got her for lunch, which by Starfire's count was still a few hours away. She sat down on the couch, not really beside anyone but Beast Boy was on the other end, eyes glued to the TV. The show that was on was one of the human 'reality TV' things, some woman eating a bowl full of worms. Quite a delicacy back home, but by Beast Boy's reactions, Starfire deemed it decidedly less than a delicacy here on earth.

Robin saw her walk in the room, and without her realizing it, had gotten up and poured her a cup of tea, the only breakfast related drink that Starfire would touch, she said coffee tasted 'wrong', and so would never drink it. He slid into the seat beside her and passed her the cup, which was sitting comfortably on a saucer of matching design, by far the most ritzy item in the tower, and no one remembered who brought it (but they suspected Beast Boy, just to annoy him).

"Morning," Robin said, smiling at her.

"Good Morning!"

She was wearing that smile that only Starfire could wear and not look completely insane. Robin loved that smile.

3.

At first there was nothing, just a harsh, dreamless black. That kind of sleep that has been forced on you, a state of restless unconsciousness. There was that, like a veil over her, and she struggled against it, but there was no getting through. The only way out was to let it hoist itself away, let the veil be lifted and the world revealed again.

She never told anyone this, but sometimes, she was scared of the dark. This kind, this total, strangling darkness, terrified her.

Slowly, and painfully, still under the veil, she opened her eyes. There was a haze, this blinding haze, she couldn't see. She tried to say something but there was something over her mouth, and she couldn't utter a word, tried to move but couldn't, tried to do anything but was unsuccessful.

The haze was slowly clearing and her eyes were focussing, though on what she could not really be sure. There were a lot of blinking lights, red, green, yellow, she could have been looking at a slightly skewed night sky if not for what the lights were set into, which looked like a series of computer panels and various bits of circuitry. There were thick wires snaking along every inch of the ground, some leading straight toward her, and up to her feet, which she realized were held immobile in some sort of platform. It was of the same computer motif, and her feet were locked into it up to the middle of her shin. She tried to shake them loose, but there wasn't an inch of give; they were stuck. Perhaps she could get down there and pull them out with her.....hands. They were trapped too, much the same way as her feet, they were stretched up over her head and locked into the same Star Trek looking design. They were pulled high up, too, there wasn't much room for her to move this way. It wouldn't be long until her shoulders cramped up, but that was the least of her concerns right now.

She tried to determine exactly where she was being held, which was a futile manoeuver at best, since her field of vision was limited, and all she could see from the left all the way over to the right was that mish mash of computer parts, none of which matched the piece that it was next to. It absolutely smacked of being stolen, though such lines of thought were hardly relevant given her present situation.

There was a door in the wall directly across from her, and it was the only accessible thing in the whole room, the only thing not covered in various computer debris, meaning that someone required easy access to this seemingly random collection of....stuff.

Only two things were clear to Raven then; one, she'd been kidnapped; and two, whoever did it knew exactly how to immobilize her. Held as she was, her powers were essentially useless.

The door slid open, and a figure silhouetted against a strong light stepped in. He looked down at a few of the panels and view screens on the way, checking for who know's what, then walked slowly and deliberately toward Raven.

For the first time in a long time, she felt completely afraid.

Who was this man? What was he planning? Why had he done what he did? She tried to ask but could only manage a few grunts and squeals from behind whatever was around her mouth.

"You're awake then?" He said, in a rather smooth, masculine voice. His voice reminded her painfully of Slade, but this voice was deeper than his, and had more emotion tied to it. She knew she couldn't speak, so she made her reply in the form of struggling against her restraints.

"I wouldn't do that," he said, "you'll only hurt yourself.".

The door slid closed again behind him, eradicating the silhouette and revealing his face for the first time. He was a young man, maybe mid twenties, with piercing blue eyes, and a scraped chin. In another situation Raven might have thought him handsome, but this was not the time for that kind of situation.

As it was, she was still scared beyond her ability to comprehend.

He leaned over a screen that was near her, to the left. He read what was on it, completely enthralled, his eyes getting steadily wider as he read. Whatever it was, to him it was good news.

"Looks, like you're ready to begin. I warn you, this might hurt a little." He pulled a remote from the breast pocket of his shirt, looking up at Raven through squinted eyes. She felt a tear roll down her cheek, and she stared intently at the control device.

With no further performance, he activated the remote.

Pain, and whatever people commonly associate with the word, was not a word to do justice to what happened to Raven then. It started at her arms and legs, and radiated through her entire body, until she was wrapped in it like a blanket. She'd been electrocuted once or twice in her line of work, and the feeling she felt now could be associated perhaps with that, only a million times worse. She thrashed against her restraints, and screamed as best she could, but the feeling continued. For a full thirty seconds it continued. Her vision was lined with red, she could feel her fingers going numb, she thought she was going to die. It felt like whatever he was doing was taking a piece of her away, sucking her dry. She was awake for every horrid moment, and did not pass out until he switched it back off again.

She went limp against her bonds, her head hanging down between her suspended arms. Her captor looked down at that same monitor again, and was again pleased with what it said.

"Very good. Very good indeed."


	2. Chapter 2

4.

It was supper time at Titan Tower, and today, Beast Boy was the chef. No one was really sure why they let him cook, no one really liked what he made....ever. Certainly, encouragement was a necessary part of life, and Beast Boy was actually a good cook, but what he cooked–tofu, soy, etc–was just not tasty to anyone but him. Today, it looked like fake....something. No, fake was the wrong word, he was insistent on that, it wasn't fake, it was a substitute. Still, what would you call something that was a substitute for the real thing? It was a good thing Raven had still not ventured out of her room, she was the one who usually objected the loudest to this sort of food. The thought of Raven prompted Starfire to look in the direction of her room, then at Robin, who was enthralled by the video game he was playing.

"Maybe someone should go and get Raven?" She asked, in her most innocent voice. Robin looked away from his game for that split second, and the space ship on the screen that moments before was so expertly piloted, now veered to the left and crashed into an asteroid, in a rather spectacular explosion. Robin looked disappointed, but not that upset, and quickly went about setting up another game. As almost an after thought, he glanced quickly at Starfire and offered his reply.

"Nah, Cyborg knocked on her door about a half hour ago and there was no answer. I think she's in one of her moods. Jinx knocked around pretty good yesterday, and you know how she gets when someone gets her mad." He started his new game part way through what he was saying, and by the time he was finished talking, he was speaking in that far off, distracted tone people use when they aren't paying attention. Still, what he said was enough to make Starfire stop worrying until the conclusion of supper, which, Beast Boy informed them, was made without a single animal suffering. If only it could be consumed without anyone suffering, Beast Boy might have had something there.

5.

Raven stirred again, and once again, she didn't know where she was. She knew it wasn't the first time she awoken in this place, but that previous instance of consciousness was distorted in her head, making it seem little more than a dream....a nightmare. She remembered very little, only someone with blue eyes, piercing blue eyes. Eyes that had no remorse or caring. Eyes that could haunt a person.

It took only a few moments, but she soon remembered that she was being held captive, as well. Hands and feet, locked into some weird machine, all attempts to wrench them free amounting to nothing. Nothing to do but wait for old blue eyes to come again.

The very idea terrified her.

This time waking up was different for her, it wasn't from a near inescapable black, rather a disorienting fuzz, like quicksand. She could have gone back under at any time, she was fighting hard to stay with consciousness, not let the fuzz take her back. Her eyes quivered on the brink of shutting again, and she found herself using what little strength she had fighting to keep them open. Why was she so tired? Not only tired, but used up, like she'd been running around levitating skyscrapers all night. She knew that exhausted feeling she got when she taxed her powers, it was an evil kind of tired that ate at her insides, requiring copious meditation to remedy. This was that feeling, but worse, much, much worse than anything she'd ever done to herself before.

And then, the one thing that would snap her back to full consciousness happened, the door opened, and in stepped old blue eyes.

He had something in his hand, but the light behind blacked it out. It wasn't until the door closed that she saw it was a bottle of water. He was once again checking computer monitors as he walked, in that slow deliberate cadence. Finally he made it to her side, throwing a glance at the screen beside her, but largely ignoring it.

"Well well, how are we doing today?" She struggled as best she could, but was still locked firmly in place.

"Now what did I tell you about that? Misbehave, and I might not give you this." He raised the bottle till it was on par with his head, and sloshed it around. Raven wasn't thirsty, but stopped moving. To give her the water, he'd have to take the gag off of her mouth, and if he did that, she could reduce this whole building to a pile of rubble with one spell. She acted complacent for a moment, trying to appease her captor.

"That's better. Now just hang on a moment." He went behind her somewhere, walking meticulously slow and wiggling the water around as he went. In a moment, she felt the cloth around her mouth go slack, and a moment later, he reappeared and removed it entirely. She opened her mouth and flexed her jaw for a moment before unleashing what she thought would be her saving grace.

"Azarath Metrion Zinthos!!" She yelled, in a broken tired voice, and expected untold havoc to be rained down around her. Instead, a small tremor emanated from deep inside her, and slowly died before it found its way out into the world. Discouraged, but defiant, she tried again.

"Azarath Metrion Zinth-

"I think that will be enough." Blue eyes said, again so calm and cool. "I assure you whatever you think you might be able to do, you won't. Not in your current state. Now, do you want the water, or don't you?" Raven, about to try her spell a third time, conceded. She didn't know how he'd managed it, but he was right. She felt completely wiped, and that small shake she felt from inside must have been what was left of her powers. She nodded slightly and he raised the bottle to her lips, turning it up and letting the contents pour down. She then realized how thirsty she really was, and drank hungrily. When the last of the water disappeared from the bottle, he pulled it away, which caused some to dribble down her chin.

"Oh now, look at that..." He said, like some sort of parental figure. With as much calm and coolness as he'd been displaying thus far, he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at the water on her face.

"Who are you?" She asked. Her voice, for the first time in a long time had a lot of emotion etched into it. She didn't feel the usual swell within her, and knew that that part of her was somehow disabled for the moment. His response was a low level chuckle, emanating from somewhere deep in his chest.

"Of all the questions, you could have asked me, child..." He smiled and shook his head, "who I am should be the last on the list". He reached up and tied the cloth back over her mouth as he spoke.

"Where you are, why you're here, what I'm doing or why I'm doing it. Honestly, there are more important things that should be concerning you." He finished tying the cloth and took a step back, brushing a hand through his black, shoulder length hair. He crossed his arms and stood, tapping his foot on the ground. It looked like something was troubling him.

"But you did ask me who I was, didn't you?" He wasn't asking, rather telling, and Raven noticed that he was speaking in a rather strange, European accent. Quite hard to place, and to be honest just then she really didn't care about that. "Well, if it came down to it, I suppose..." he took a step forward and leaned in close, so his mouth was only a few inches away from Raven's ear. "...I suppose you could call me Lazarus."

He stepped back again, and smiled. The look of fear on the girls face; the trembling, the wide, purple eyes with those tears that stood in their corners but refused to fall, all of it, for one reason or another, amused him.

6.

"Raven, please come out! Have we done something to offend you?" Starfire was shouting at a closed, locked door. More specifically, it was Raven's closed, locked door. And it hadn't been opened in more than a day. They'd let it go past supper, all evening, and they'd all gone to bed without seeing hide nor hair of Raven. When they all got up the next morning, and she was still in her room, that was a bit too much. Even when she was in her quiet, brooding, inches from snapping frame of mind, she usually at least showed her face once a day. Now, it was going on two days since they'd last seen her, and the group was starting to get worried.

"Come on Raven, if there's a problem, talk to us!" Cyborg this time, offering a hard rap on the door and shouting. They were all gathered there outside her room like a group of carollers. She wouldn't have liked a Christmas carol, and she wouldn't have liked them standing there, but they were, and they weren't going anywhere until she came out; Robin had said as much to her, albeit yelling at her through her closed door.

"Raven....please come out!" Beast Boy.

"Yes, friend, please come out!" Starfire.

"Raven, come on, this is insane." Robin

They all yelled, they all pleaded, they all asked nicely, and they all slowly came to realize the same thing. Something about this whole situation was just not right, and they all knew it. Raven was not this type of person, to just wall herself up in her room for so long and not come out. Not only that, but what on earth could have been wrong? Last they all knew they were supposed to be celebrating a hard won victory, not sulking in their rooms for whatever reason.

No, something was definitely up, and Robin would stand for it no longer.

"Cyborg, can you get this door open?"

"Well......yeah I think I can. But should we really-

"Raven is our friend, even if something really, really bad was going on, she would have told us by now. All of you know it, all of you can sense that there's something really wrong going on."

No one said anything, but they all knew that it was true.

"Cyborg, open the door....please." Cyborg nodded confidently and kneeled down beside the door. They all took a step back, to give him room, and as they did he popped a cover off the wall, revealing a weave work of wires, covering a metal background, with a few circuit panels placed throughout. It was one of these panels that drew Cyborg's attention, and with one last glimpse up at the group, he ripped it free, and the door swung open.

They all stood there a lot longer than they should have, for they could not believe what their eyes were telling them. Raven was not there, which meant that she hadn't been there for a while, which meant that something was wrong, a whole lot more wrong than they ever thought.

7.

Lazarus was back, checking his screens, largely ignoring the sobbing girl he had locked up in front of him. Oh yes, by then she was crying softly to herself, the fear had almost over run her. She supposed that, having suppressed her emotions for so long, that when they were allowed to flood back like this, it was almost too much for her system to handle. She did feel that familiar pull inside her, that horrible something that was trying to get out, which meant that her powers were coming back to her. The next time he took her gag off, she would make him regret it.

Presently, he was looking at the screen beside her again, and smiling widely at what he saw. He hadn't looked at her yet, but his proximity was making her even more afraid than she already was. He didn't have any water with him, so his presence meant something else, and not one thing she could think of was very good.

She knew, he was going to hurt her again.

After a little while, he looked up at her, and the smile he already wore got all the more wider to see her in the state she was in. That shaking like a leaf, oh how it made him smile.

"Well, I think we're ready for another dose." He pulled his control panel out, which caused her to react violently, pulling hard against her bonds. She was grunting behind her gag, and Lazarus thought to himself that, just this once, or perhaps even more times, he should let her voice what she had to say.

However, as it was, she would probably do something nasty if he took the gag off.

"Hmmm, maybe just a half dose, if you want to speak that much."

He pushed the button and sent her thrashing again.

It wasn't for very long, he figured a ten second burst would wear her out enough to talk without being able to do any damage. He knew she had to be handled carefully, or she might bring the whole building down around them. After the ten seconds, he shut the machine down, and left her there, panting heavily with her chin on her chest.

"Now then, you wanted to say something?" He walked up and wrenched the gag from around her mouth. It took her a minute to catch her breath, and when she did (at least enough to speak) her voice came out cracked and tired.

"Why are you doing this to me?"

"Ahhh, a question worth answering, congratulations." He quickly reapplied the gag before answering.

"Why am I doing this to you, now that must be something that is really just bugging you to no end, hm?" He was walking back and forth, with his arms crossed and his chin pinched between the thumb and index finger of his left hand. He ended by stopping and looking up at Raven, a smug smile on his face, lowering his hand when he smiled.

"I am doing this to you, because you are the only one I can do it to." He resumed his pacing. "I am doing this to you, because you are the one person on this earth that can make this work. You look confused, well allow me to explain further." He went out of Raven's field of vision for a moment, and came back dragging a simple looking, wooden chair. He sat in it, right in front of Raven, crossing his legs in an overly feminine way. He steepled his fingers together, and just looked, long and hard into Raven's eyes.

Of all the things she was feeling then, she added uncomfortable to the pile. After about a minute of looking, his eyes never straying from hers, he continued

"I know who you are, child. I know exactly who you are. The daughter of human, and demon, and not just any demon, the Demon King , Trigon." He stood, facing her and still staring into her eyes. "And that's why I'm doing this to you, demon." He pulled the controller back out of his pocket.

"I am doing this, because only a Demon will do." He pressed the button and started the machine up again, sending wave after wave of pain through her body. As she was thrown about as much as her restraints would allow, he walked closer, and stopped only when he was within a foot of her.

"Only you have that special gift inside you." He shut the machine off and let her pass out, smiling again as she did.

7.

"Alright, so if she ain't in the tower, where is she?"

They were all gathered in the main hall, amidst all of their cutting edge technology that couldn't do a thing. The first thing they found in Raven's room was her communicator, which meant that they couldn't track her location. The second thing that they found (actually, Robin had found it, he was the detective after all), was a shoulder length black hair, which none of them could claim to own. This meant that someone got into her room, someone that was less than invited, no less. The hair was on the table which the group was milling around, but no one was really paying any attention to it.

"Well, that's what we're trying to find out." Robin said, almost as an afterthought.

On the big screen behind them all was nothing but static, which was exactly what every camera in the tower in between the door and Raven's bedroom registered for a number of hours. It was clear that someone came in and systematically disabled them. How and exactly why he'd taken Raven was beyond their knowledge for the moment, and, they thought, would probably remain so until they found her.

"Maybe it was the Hive, you know, a revenge thing. I mean, she really thrashed Jinx the other day." It was Beast Boy, offering his two cents. It was a valid question, if not for one undeniable fact;

"Yeah, that's true, but Jinx, Mammoth, Gizmo, Brother Blood and every other Hive member we ran into the other day, is behind bars, in nice orange jumpsuits." Robin said, and turned back to the static playing on the screen.

He stared at the black and white dots, fighting as they were for domination over the screen. His mind raced with a thousand thoughts, all of them questions without answers. For all the detective work that had been grilled into him over the years, he could think of nothing that he could do to ascertain Raven's whereabouts. Frustrated beyond words, he slammed his fist into the desk in front of him. It was a feeling that they all had, but could only express it through sullen expression and sadness. Someone had kidnapped their friend, and they couldn't think of a single thing to do about it. Starfire, who'd been in front of the screen, bringing up the various static feeds from two nights ago via the keyboard on the desk in front of her, decided to try to start a conversation. Perhaps it would get the creative juices flowing.

"I wonder what she sees now..." It was something Starfire was genuinely concerned with. After all, if they could see through her eyes, they would have their first, and probably best lead in the case......or situation, or whatever this was. She said it only in passing, a thought expressed verbally and little else, but after mulling it over for a moment, both Cyborg and Beast Boy had a revelation. Perhaps, a way to find her.

"See through her eyes?" Beast Boy said, questioning.

"That's a hell of an idea." Cyborg said, completing Beast Boy's thought.

"Come on, we have to show you something." Beast Boy and Cyborg got up and hurried into Raven's bedroom, dragging Robin and Starfire behind them.


	3. Chapter 3

8.

"What's in Raven's room that's so important?" Robin asked as he was forcibly pulled toward the now permanently open door.

"It's...too weird to explain, just hurry." Beast Boy said over his shoulder. It didn't take long for the group to reach their destination, and when they did, the first thing that Cyborg did upon entering the room was hit the light switch beside the door.

They found out, just seconds later, that there were no bulbs in the sockets in her room.

No surprise really.

They sufficed to walk around in the gloomy darkness, Beast Boy and Cyborg searching for what they thought might help find Raven, Robin and Starfire just searching. They all noticed a rose, made of...paper? It was holding a place of special honour on one of her shelves, along with a number of other artifacts that were too odd for any sort of description.

Beast Boy, who had momentarily taken the form of a dog, searching with his nose to the ground for whatever it was he was so excited about, popped back into his own form holding the thing in his hand. Robin looked up when he heard Beast Boy's victory cry, but wasn't entirely impressed by what he saw.

"A vanity mirror?" It was something that he'd never thought he'd see in Raven's room, but there the surprise ended. It was certainly not something he'd never seen before, although it was particularly creepy looking (though since it was Raven's, that fact did not surprise him all that much).

"No, it's some kind of meditation thing." Cyborg said, walking over to Beast Boy's side. He knew all to well what it was. He'd taken a trip through that looking glass, and whatever was on the other side, it sure wasn't Wonderland.

"What does it...do?" Starfire inquired.

"It's a gateway into...well I guess into Raven's mind," said Cyborg, clearly unsure of what he was saying. But Robin could see that, unsure as he was, what he was saying was the proven truth.

"And how do you know this?"

"I think that can wait for now, don't you?" Beast Boy said, giving the mirror a shake. How did he get this thing to work the last time? It just seemed to come to life randomly, shooting its weird red hand out and snatching him and Cyborg up. After a few more futile, completely unscientific attempts at getting the thing to do what it did the last time he'd held it, he gave up and put it back on the dresser.

"Come on, we have work to do." Robin said motioning that they should all leave. He wrapped a comforting arm around Beast Boy's shoulder as they met.

"Don't worry, we'll find her." He said, and smiled. Neither his words or his expression exactly filled Beast Boy with confidence, and neither were very believable, either. Suddenly from behind them, the was a small clatter. They all whipped around, to see the mirror that Beast Boy had held, jumping around on the spot. Starfire and Robin looked completely shocked, while Beast Boy and Cyborg both looked fairly happy to see what they were seeing.

"What is happening?" Starfire said, shying away from the leaping mirror. Robin was backing away as well, but Cyborg stood at the door and stopped them from leaving.

"No, this is a good thing, just watch." They all turned their attention to the mirror, as its jumping and jiggling around ceased, and a very uncomfortable calm settled over the room.

It was a short calm, however.

Red streams of energy shot out of the mirror, flying like well aimed whips towards the group. There were two for each of them. They were far too quick for anyone in the group to react, and they were quickly encased. Before they could even say or do anything they were pulled forward and into a red, spinning vortex, flowing from the mirror. The last any of them saw, before passing into a rather comforting blackness, was the black, twisted metal of the mirrors edge, and them passing by it at great speed.

9.

Raven was awake, but Lazarus was nowhere to be found. Her eyes once again fought against her, and she struggled to remain conscious. His name kept floating through her mind...Lazarus, the man that Christ brought back from the dead. It was a religion and practice which she never really believed in, and assumed that it was a moniker he had given himself for her benefit. But what was the significance of that? Had he made the journey to the other side? Died just like his namesake? She didn't know...the line of thought was giving her a headache. She gave it up, and let sleep take her again, slipping quickly into restless unconsciousness.

10.

The rest of the Titan's were arising from their own naps, and much like Raven, had no idea where they were waking up. They all stood, and, in their own ways, shook off the after affects of sleep. It was a weird sort of thing they were awaking from, they all knew that it wasn't 'sleep' per say, they all felt much too refreshed for that. It was like they were forced into a state of rest, because they wouldn't have been able to handle what they had just been through had they been awake to experience it. Certainly, based on their surroundings, it was quite a trip.

They were standing in what could only be described as a desert, but it wasn't hot like a desert, and the sand was an off blue colour, a muddy sky. By the position of the sun, it was near sundown, and a blood red streak hugged the horizon, and seemed to wrap all the way around, meeting behind them. It was an impossible sight, a sunset that seemed to encompass the earth. Above them, a starless, black sky was stretched like one of Raven's bedsheets.

"Ok," Robin said, in slow exaggeration. "So now what?" He looked at Beast Boy for guidance, but Beast boy was, in reality, as confused as everyone else. He made no verbal reply, only shrugged his shoulders and continued to look around at the bizarre landscape.

Robin stooped and picked up a handful of the sand they were standing on, letting it sift slowly through his fingers. It felt real enough, but it could not have been real. It just wasn't possible. What he was looking at–the sand, the sky, that stale windless feeling, like they were stuck in a small closet–all of them were simply impossible. The next thing that happened, however, was beyond impossible. If you asked any of them about it afterwards, they'd all consider denying it ever happened. That way they wouldn't have to explain it.

It started with a rumbling underfoot. Not very strong, not at first anyway, just enough to disturb the small piles of sand around them. It started to worry the group however, because it was quickly gathering in intensity.

"Everyone brace yourself!" Robin yelled in anticipation. It all happened far to quickly for them to do anything. The ground kicked up its tremors a million notches, and started to shake violently under them, knocking them all off of their feet. They all struggled to keep the blue sands off of them, try to keep from sinking, and they were all doing a decent job of it, until the screaming started.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" It was loud, impossibly, impossibly loud. Every hand shot to every ear to try to block out the horrible noise, but there was no stopping it. It was in their heads as well as all around them. It was through them, in the sands in the sky, in that tree on the distant horizon. It fell on them like rain, it rose like weeds, it slowly ripped them apart. All the while the shaking was getting worse, and all the while the group were thrown around, helpless in the grasp of this new chaos.

Suddenly, even more suddenly than the screaming came, the electricity came. It hung in the air like liquid, thrashing around in lengths of blue fire. It cut along the air just above them, they dare not try to stand or it might cut them to ribbons. It danced, in pairs, in threes, all around them, threatening to take them all. They could feel their hair standing on end as the very air carried an intense charge.

Then, it all stopped.

Everything stopped, the shakes, the screaming, the electric blue lights, everything came to an immediate halt. Then something else happened. That red sunset, strangely beautiful in its crimson light, finished. The last semi-circle of sunlight fell under the horizon and plunged the whole area into an eerily dark night.

"Is everyone alright?" It was Robin, shouting over the silence that pervaded. His ears were ringing like everyone else's and yelling was the only way he could hear himself. A green beam of light fought at the darkness, illuminating Starfire's face. She held the green light in her hand like a beacon, drawing the other Titan's toward it. When they were all next to each other, bathed in the pastel green light, Beast Boy offered his thoughts;

"Ok, that was a little weird." The others were thinking the same thing, but made no replies.

"So what now?" Cyborg said, scratching the side of his head thathad feeling in it.

"Help me please...help me guys...I'm scared..." It was a small voice, in the darkness. The voice, it seemed, of a child. It trembled with intense fear, and though no one saw the face it belonged to, they knew that face had tears running down it.

"Who said that?" Said Starfire.

"It was me..." The voice said, trailing off. They were able to tell better where it was coming from, but when they wheeled to that direction, there was nothing.

"Well, please come into the light, we cannot see you."

"I can't...I'm so scared..." the voice had a huge tremble to it.

"Come on, we ain't gonna hurt you," said Cyborg, in the most inviting voice he could muster.

"No...please help me..." Whomever it was not making much sense. It sounded like the prospect of being amongst them terrified her, about as much as the prospect of being alone in the dark.

"Alright...hang on a sec." Cyborg said, reaching up and hitting some switch on his temple.

"Night vision, I'll find her."

He scanned around quickly and saw, in the near distance, a huddled mass, no more than three feet tall, wearing a cloak and hood. It was behind the group, and he pointed in the proper direction. Starfire aimed her light, and illuminated...Raven. But not Raven, whoever it was, was too young to be Raven, a child of no more than ten. She was dressed like Raven though...She had her hand up in front of her face, trying to keep them away.

"No...stay away...please...help me..." Her face was wet with tears, and she was walking backwards away from the group. It wasn't Raven...was it?

"Please, we are not going to hurt you," Starfire said, holding out the hand that was not glowing in a gesture of good faith.

"This must be her fear..." Cyborg muttered to Beast Boy, who nodded absently

"No!" The child took off in a run.

"Cyborg follow her!" Robin said urgently. Cyborg took off after the green blob, which is what the visage of Raven had been reduced to with his night vision on. A fairly vague blob, but easy to track. He was easily able to keep up with it, and the group was easily keeping up with him. He felt confident in his pursuit of the Raven thing, until it completely disappeared, about five strides in front of him. It was far too fast for him to stop, and so the group followed him, and just like that, they were immersed in the light of a noon day sun.

They found themselves standing now, in a field of roses. Wilting, dying roses.

11.

"Soon, child." Lazarus was speaking, but Raven was out cold and unable to hear him.

"Soon this will be over, and my machine will be at full power."

12.

They were all sitting in the field. It was a beautiful spring day, and the roses lent perfume to the air. They were all in various states of decay, however, which was not very good at all, if this was supposed to be some sort representation of Raven's mind.

"So where do we go from here?" Robin said, forever expecting Beast Boy to be the guide to this twisted mind scape.

"Listen, for the hundredth time...I don't know." Beast Boy was holding a rose that looked relatively healthy, but it was a rare find, and it appeared to be slowly dying in his hand.

"What is going on here?" Starfire asked, looking at the rose, as the first signs of real decay were setting in.

"Lazarus is stealing all of their life." It was a voice from behind them, and they all spun to see who'd spoken it. It was Raven...another Raven. This one was wearing a dullbeige cloak, with the hood down. She wore an expression devoid of any significance though it wasn't the typical Raven, emotionless look. Her eyes were matte, vacant, like she simply didn't care.

"Who's Lazarus?" Robin inquired of this new Raven.

"Who cares?" She replied.

"Shouldn't you?" Beast Boy asked.

"...meh." She said, with a shrug of the shoulders. The group looked around to the surrounding environment, which didn't appear to be saying anything.

"This must be her apathy..." Cyborg muttered to Beast Boy, who nodded in silent agreement.

"Don't listen to her, she doesn't know what she's talking about." It was Raven's voice again, and again it was from behind them. They all turned to greet another Raven, this one in a sky blue cloak.

"I can tell you everything you need to know," she said, self-assurance being the order of the day. She stood, with her hands on her hips, and a broad smile on her face.

"You can tell us about this Lazarus guy?" Beast Boy asked

"Yep, sure can! Height, weight, eye colour, hair colour, even his brothers, sisters, mother father, everything. I have all the answers!"

"Confidence," Beast Boy and Cyborg said in unison. Robin turned to them.

"I hope you'll both explain this to me one day..." he said, running a hand through his spiked black hair. He turned back to the Confident Raven, and then back to the group, shrugging his shoulders.

"It's a start..." he said. He turned back to address Confidence.

"Alright then, let's have it."

13.

Lazarus. Six foot tall, about 180 pounds, blue eyes, and black, shoulder length hair. When they inquired about the promised family history, Confidence admitted that she made that part up, but in a really, really surefooted voice. She volunteered her efforts to find out the name's of the man's friends and family, but the Titans were fairly confident that that particular search would end in nothing but headache's. Plus, they wanted this blue-clad Raven to stop talking, her confidant tone was becoming sickeningly infectious.

"Ok, ok, ok," Robin said, after this light blue Raven had been going at a pretty good clip for just a little too long. "So this guy...Lazarus, where is he, and...uhh, you?"

"Oh, well I know that, for sure I do, just let me think for a second." It really was an odd sight, she was confidence personified; to the point of lying outright. They all knew that her response meant she had no idea, and thus Raven herself had no idea, but Confidence was absolutely insisting that she knew the answer. In a way, it was refreshing...but not entirely helpful.

"You shouldn't listen to her, she simply hasn't got her facts straight. I could quote several sources..." There was a ruffling of pages behind them. They all turned around, again, to meet another Raven. This one, in bright yellow, was actually different physically from the Raven they all knew; this one had a pair of thick glasses on. She had a huge book in her hands and she was leafing through its pages, looking for who know's what. She was largely ignoring the group, pouring her attention into the book.

"Alright, this must be intelligence." Robin said, finally catching on to what was going on. If they were in Raven's head, then all these different Raven's must be aspects of her psyche; first fear, then apathy, then confidence, now intelligence. And, it appeared that they all seemed to know what Raven knew, on an up to the minute basis. What they'd found out from Confidence, all that information about this Lazarus person, they might be able to use to track him down when they get back to the computers in Titan Tower. Robin, along with everyone else, had their own mental images of what the guy looked like, skewed slightly by their intense dislike of the man. No, not dislike..._hatred_. The very description of him had set all their blood boiling, for now they knew what the man who took their friend looked like, and they could imagine what it would look like with their hands wrapped around his throat, what he would look like screaming. They knew they would never realize that image, but they knew what it looked like.

Sometimes, being a hero just sucked.

"See right here, where she said that she knew Lazarus' family, then later recanted that statement."

"Didn't that happen like, one minute ago?" Beast Boy asked, under his breath so that none of the Raven's could hear him, but the rest of the Titans could.

"Alright...this is getting us nowhere. Do any of you know where you...Raven...do you know where she is?" Apathy–who had been nonchalantly picking roses and smelling them, then discarding them without a further glance–looked up briefly at Robin, and shrugged her shoulders, before returning to her rose picking.

"...no, that information doesn't exist...all it says here is 'lots of computers and darkness.'" Intelligence was reading from her book, following along with her finger. Confidence snapped out of the casual stance she had been in, with her arms crossed and her head down, into a more heroic type posture. She put her hands on her hips and let out a boisterous laugh;

"HA! I know the answer to that! That's an easy one!" They all looked at her, even Apathy stood up from her flower picking to see what the commotion was.

"...Heh...get back to you on it..." Confidence blushed and started to rub the back of her head, smiling stupidly.

Ok, so she didn't know.

"Well, how do we get that information?" Starfire asked of Intelligence, who was still flipping back and forth through her giant book of knowledge. They all looked up, Apathy, confidence, and Intelligence, all in tandem, and looked at Starfire like she'd asked something else all together, something startlingly shocking, something forbidden.

"The Two Great Mirrors, they see all." Intelligence said. The Titans looked at each other for a moment, and they all knew that they were thinking of the same thing.

Her eyes, the Great Mirrors had to be her eyes.

"Ok, Titan huddle." Cyborg said, and threw an arm around both Starfire and Beast Boy's shoulders. Robin joined them, first pushing Confidence–who for whatever reason, had run over to join the huddle–out of the way. She stumbled back a step, then returned to her smiling.

"If we stand on this side of her eyes...maybe we can see what she's looking at?" Cyborg said.

"Well, we'll see something." Said Robin.

"But, we do not know the way..." said Starfire.

"I bet one of them do," Beast Boy said, nodding towards the Ravens. The group all looked together at the three Raven's–Apathy had her back to them, kneeling on the ground, looking at the flowers, Intelligence had her nose buried in her book, and Confidence was standing there staring at them, smiling...well, smiling confidently. Robin let out a rather exasperated sigh and ran his gloved hand through his hair again.

"Ok...lead the way."

14.

When Raven came to this time, Lazarus was standing there, with his bottle, looking up coolly at her with those blue piercing eyes of his.

"Ready for a drink?" Raven had long lost the ability to struggle at all against the machines she was locked into. Her wrists were beyond sore, her shoulders were far beyond cramped. She hung like a marionette with its strings stapled to the ceiling. Still, she managed a mumble, and a slight nod of approval.

She now knew what Lazarus was doing, or rather, the consequence of what he was doing. He was slowly killing her. Every time she awoke from one of their little 'sessions', she was more and more tired, a little more gone. One time, he would turn on his machine, and shock her to death, drain the last of her and leave her an empty husk. Her only hope were the Titans, and there was no way for them to know where she was, and so she'd given up on them as well.

There were no tears, though; she'd long since run out of those.

He undid her gag and tipped the bottle up. She drank as well as she could manage, which wasn't well at all, but she was very thirsty. She felt as though she'd been carrying cotton in her mouth, and quickly downed the whole of the bottle. Before he could reapply the gag, she spoke;

"Please...stop...you're killing me..." She panted. He covered her mouth again, and looked at her, with a small, crooked smile on his face.

"Yes, I am indeed. More than that, I am _going_ to kill you." He bent down and picked something up that he'd obviously brought in with him before Raven had awoken.

"Now, I suppose since that fact is true, you deserve a bit of an explanation." What he had was an ancient book, with writing that Raven recognized as text used by mystics and warlocks, many thousands of years ago. He opened it to a marked page and held it open in front of Raven, so she could see what it was. It appeared to be a diagram of something, many lines connecting many different shapes, what could have been a depiction of electricity was whipped across the page, the product of an artists brush at high speed.

"That's where you are." He said, his face obscured by the book he was holding. He then transferred the book from his hands to one hand and his and the crook of his arm, leaving one hand free, which he used to point to one particular section. It was a piece of the work Raven had not paid much attention to. It looked, on closer inspection, to be a very primitive depiction of a demon. It looked a lot on par with an Egyptian hieroglyph in terms of style, anciently primitive and decaying from its very page. It had a body, two arms two legs, and a head with two twisted horns growing from it.

"And that, child, is you." He put the book down on the floor beside him, and waved his hand around him.

"This is the machine, and you are the power source. Ahhh, yes, a machine that is run on the power of a Demon. I had to take some liberties in its construction, but it is essentially what you saw in the book." He let his hand fall to his side and walked towards Raven, leaning in so that his face was right in front of hers.

"It is a machine that will bring me back from the dead." Despite her weakened condition, Raven's eyes still managed to shoot wide with shock.

"Oh yes, as a door nail, my dear. You see, I'm sure you know that Lazarus is not my name, I said that as...well as my little joke. You may have heard of me, my name is really Gavrosh." It was a name she'd read of...in reference to something horrible. It was in one of her older books, and she thought she remembered the story.

'Gavrosh', the butcher, the mass murderer. A powerful sorcerer who conquered most of the known world about ten thousand years ago. Created an empire in his image, and ruled as king. But, since empires by their very nature are fleeting, he was soon overthrown. He was convicted of his crimes, and sentenced to death...well a kind of death, anyway. An ancient demon sect put a curse on the man, sending him into the Vortex called purgatory for a million moons hence, which, by Raven's understanding was some 83,000 years. That was about ten thousand years ago, and the sentence was clearly not up yet.

In short, he was either lying, or defying the sorcerer's of old, and using Raven's powers to do it.

"Ahhh, you have heard of me then," he said, seeing the expression on her face.

"A million moons...HA! Ten thousand years I have been in purgatory. Can you even conceive of what kind of punishment that is? To be alone, and bored, for 10 millennia!" He was raising his voice for the first time. The sound of it was horrifying.

"I got out, though, child. Part of me escaped, into this sorry young man. Now, you will bring me my body, that I may cease the use of this lifeless husk..." he lifted his shirt, and Raven was scared anew by the sight; the skin under his clothes was gray and dry, pulled over the bones beneath it like the skin of a drum. It appeared almost as a mummy, pre autopsy. The only parts of him that were not withered and dead were his hands and his face, and those were unusually pale, she realized. Raven started to squirm as best she could, out of sheer desperation and fear. She was screaming behind her gag, and Lazarus...Gavrosh, decided it was that time again, to let her speak.

"But how...how did you escape Purgatory?" He quickly reapplied the gag.

"That's a fair question," he said, and stroked the side of her face with his palm. She pushed him away as best she could, but found that a futile attempt.

"Before they sent me, before I was sentenced, I left a small piece of myself behind." He held up his hand and showed off a ruby encrusted ring. It shone in the minimal light of the chamber, eerily, like the light was from within and not without.

"This...boy, whomever he is, happened across it...pity for him. But in his body...I am powerless. I need my body back, which is where you come in." He took a few steps back.

"You see, it is still stuck somewhere in the other plain, and I intend to bring it back. Resurrect it, like Lazarus. That is why I have made this little Deus Ex Machina, my God Machine." He looked up at her, againreading her expression.

"And what then? Well, I think you know. I had an empire once, I intend to get it back, with your help."

He then laughed, long and hard, with Raven cowering in his presence


	4. Chapter 4

15.

"So, this Lazarus guy- Confidence interrupted before Robin could finish,

"Gavrosh, his name is Gavrosh."

"But you said his name was Lazarus," Beast Boy said accusingly. Intelligence responded, flipping furiously through the pages of her book.

"We, uh, thought his name was Lazarus, but it turns out that was just an alias." She said, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose as she spoke.

"An alias...but why?" Starfire asked.

"Because he is a very bad man," Confidence said, "one of the most evil sorcerers in the history of men."

"Really?" Said Robin, urging Confidence to continue, and over the next few minutes, she did just that. She relayed all the necessary information regarding this new enemy, paying particular attention to the part where he was completely intent on killing Raven to achieve his plans.

"Oh we gotta put a stop to this..." muttered Cyborg.

When Confidence had finished, an uncomfortable silence pervaded the group. None could think to say anything appropriate, not even all the Ravens. Everyone was silent, thinking of a life without Raven, and hating themselves for doing so.

The patch of land they were passing through had changed drastically. It had been the roses for a while, but as they walked on, the roses became deader, and deader, and blacker and more wilted until finally they were walking on dry cracked dirt, without even a blade of grass for company.

That was, until they got to the next door.

It was a solid oak door, standing alone in the middle of the dried out field. The Titans looked at it with some trepidation, but to the Raven's it was more normal a site to see, judging from their reaction to it. Beast Boy wandered dumbly behind it, just to confirm exactly what it was; a door to nowhere, sticking out of the ground.

"Uh...yeah," he said, in a rhetorical tone.

"The Great Mirrors are beyond this door," Intelligence said, for the first time speaking without the aid of her book, rather, her own memory.

"Yeah, you gotta go through to get to where you gotta go!" Confidence said boisterously.

"Or you can stay here...whatever," Apathy added, with a shrug of her shoulders.

They all looked at the door, largely ignoring what the Raven's were saying, with the exception of Intelligence, who seemed to know what she was talking about. All of them were finding it harder to believe that all of the Raven's were aspects of the mind of their friend. They'd never known her to be apathetic at all, and yet here apathy was, living up to her namesake with particular efficiency. It was refreshing to see Raven...or _a_ Raven, display such confidence as the confident Raven did, and in a cute blue cloak as well. Beast Boy made a note however, that he liked the genuine article more than any of these ones, the purple of her cape set off the purple in her eyes, blue just didn't go.

"I guess we have no choice..." Robin said, pressing his hand against the door, testing its solidness, and being slightly disappointed by realizing that, yes, it was real. It had mass, it had depth and height, and though nothing really held it up, it couldn't be pushed over.

"Yeah...let's get it over with," Cyborg said. Robin grabbed the knob, and with one final glance over his shoulder, turned it and pulled the door. It was like opening the airlock on a spaceship, an immense pulling wind took hold of them all, and sucked them through, leaving Apathy, Confidence, and Intelligence standing amongst the dead roses and dirt.

The trip was short, but violent.

Seconds later they all slammed into a metallic surface, hard and unforgiving. It wasn't anywhere near as easy a transition as the last time they'd passed to a new area, but when they stood up, they began to see why. They were in an immense laboratory, with high ceilings, and stainless steel everything. View screens and panels buzzed all around them, and flourescent lights set into the walls bathed the area in a stale white.

"This is getting quite...strange..." Starfire said as she hovered a few inches off the ground.

"I think we passed strange a looooong time ago," said Cyborg, turning his right arm to its cannon option, preparing for what he thought was an impending battle. He had prickles up and down his back with the sight of this new place, and didn't want to go on exploring it without first arming himself. Thus equipped, he felt a little better.

"Careful, Titans," Robin said. He was looking around at the surroundings, it was definitely strange, as Starfire had suggested. It was like a dozen different places they'd been (back in the real world, that is), various hideouts of the super villains. It was even a little like the batcave, though no one else was likely to make that connection.

"Let's go."

They started to walk, and as they did their footsteps pinged off of the steel floor, and echoed off the walls. They were all wondering, why exactly a place such as this existed inside Raven's head. Certainly, there was no logical explanation for any of the places they'd seen thus far, but this place seemed too...specific to fit into the symbolic imagery of this world. It was everything about it, the cold steel of it, the harsh lights, the switches and diode's, it was all constructed to be an almost literal translation of a real place, and for whatever reason, that was more confusing than any of the places they'd been so far.

"God Dammit! Do you have to make so much noise!" That was unmistakable, it was Raven's voice, but with a cutting edge they'd never heard. Not anger per say, but anger was a part of it.

"Where did that come from?" Robin asked no one in particular. No one responded.

"You're telling me, that you're so stupid you can't even find me...AHHH!" They could hear exactly where the noise was coming from, and picked up their pace to get to where that was. When they got there, the latest in a series of totally surprising sights presented itself.

It was another Raven, this one in a jet black cloak, with its hood pulled up high, casting shadows over the whole of her face. They could see her mouth, however, which was pulled into a horrible sneer.

She appeared to be connected to the machine's around them. Her arms were fixed over her head, and turned into a collection of wires just above her elbow. Her entire lower body below her hips was also gone, her body simply melded into another thick bundle of silver wires instead of her having legs. Despite that fact, she appeared to be struggling against the machine's, like they held her in place rather than simply completed her.

"What are you looking at!" She asked Robin, in an almost physically painful tone of voice. "You like what you see? Do you see what that bastard is doing to me?" She shook her body which jiggled the wires all they way up to where they connected to the ceiling. Starfire looked away, she felt ill. The distorted image of Raven, of her friend, was nearly too much for her system to bear.

"Do I scare you, little alien? Why do you always act like a child? Why don't you just grow up?" Starfire hardly moved, but shook at every word, like she was being attacked.

"Now just wait a minute!" Robin said, moving in between Starfire and the new Raven.

"Oh, our fearless leader speaks. WHAT KIND OF LEADER LETS THIS HAPPEN TO A MEMBER OF HIS TEAM!" Her voice became very loud, shaking the walls, hitting all of the Titans far too hard.

"Raven, please...don't yell..." It was Beast Boy, holding a hand of truce up toward Raven; a hand which went largely ignored.

"And you," she said, staring at Beast Boy, almost staring _through_ him. "Why do you have to tell those stupid jokes all the time? Don't you realise you're _not funny?_" She was beating herself against her machined parts, and screamed with a voice that was not entirely human. Beast Boy recoiled back a few steps. The only one left in front of her was Cyborg, who was assuming (and, yes, fearing) that he was next.

"Get out of here metal man...just go..." She sounded like she was losing her wind, then, after seemingly thinking of something profound, she looked at him again, eyes blazing. "Think you're so smart, huh? Just build a car, a rocket ship, you think that impresses me? Well, do you!" Those words, at least to the Titans, immediately took some credibility away from the spectre before them. Before, what she said, was said with such confidence, such bravado, and then she gets to Cyborg and loses all her momentum. She insulted him in a way that made it sound like she was grasping at the last straw, scraping the underside of the barrel. It gave the group newfound confidence when they looked up at her.

They all walked back up to join Cyborg, a lot less scared than they were when they left that position.

"What do you think this one represents?" Robin asked casually. Starfire, who was, to a certain degree, still shying away from this new Raven, spoke;

"Anger...it must be anger."

"No! How naive can one person be! Argh!" It was the Raven again, but everyone ignored her this time.

"No, we saw her anger the last time we were here. Trust me, you don't want to run into him." Cyborg said.

"Him?" Starfire said, scratching the back of her head.

"Let's just say Raven has some issues with her father." Beast Boy said, cutting in between Starfire and Cyborg.

"Well, who exactly is this then?"

"SHUT UP! I HATE YOU, I HATE YOU ALL!"

"Hatred..." they all said. All except Starfire, who had that 'my puppy just died' look in her eyes. She only got that way when they were fighting amongst each other, or she felt rejected, or both.

"Does Raven really feel this way?" She asked the group, as the dark image of Raven flailed pointlessly against her mechanical parts. Robin stepped beside Starfire, and laid a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"She has hatred, and I'm sure there are things about all of us that kind of annoy her, that's just normal," Robin said, though he was marking his words very carefully. He looked down into Starfire's green eyes, as she looked up into his mask. "If you asked her, I mean _really_ asked her, she might say that my leadership skills were lacking in some area's, that Beast Boy's jokes are a little silly, that you can sometimes act a bit different, but she doesn't hate us for those reasons. Those feelings are just blown out of all proportions because, well," he levelled his finger at the Raven in black, "because she _is_ those feelings."

"Plus, all that stuff that's being done to her, could be making Hatred here a little more violent than usual." Cyborg said.

"Ok, ok. Let's get outta here before Hate girl here decides to chew her arms off and come after us." Beast Boy interrupted. They all agreed without a word.

"Don't suppose you know the way out of here, do you?" Robin asked the Raven, who responded by gnashing her teeth at him, and pulling against the machine's that held her.

"Didn't think so."

16.

Where they found themselves next, was a very dark place indeed. Not the dark of night, they could still see their hands before them, the world in front of them, no, this was different. It was like a dark fog, something that hugged you tight and didn't let you go. It felt like death, that was the only explanation for it.

And it was getting worse, not better.

Robin was thinking completely depressing thoughts. Ever since he'd found out that Raven was not expected to live much longer, the names and faces of all the people he'd seen die in his life kept creeping through his mind.

Mom...

Dad...

Terra...

Even all the hero's who had given their lives for the cause of good. So many names, Don, Barry, Oliver (though that death proved a temporary condition with him), he'd lost count. Batman told him of these things, when a reserve from the Justice League died, when a hero from some other group died. Hell, even Superman was dead for a little while. Every name, every grave, every damned face was like a dagger in him, and there was one thing he was simply not going to allow, it was to let himself fail in this mission, and add Raven's name to the list. On his watch, none of the Titans would end up on that list, he'd let himself be killed before that happened.

He had to find her first, though.

The trip out of the laboratory had been relatively simple. After they left Hatred behind, yelling as she was, they came across a large metal door. It looked almost like a submarine hatch, with a large spinning handle in the middle, which when forced open hard enough, made a series of clicks and popped the door open. When they walked through, they found themselves in the fog.

It was another odd landscape, this one consisting of a sun in an apparently permanent eclipse. The white halo this created bathed the entire area in a dull white light. This was barely enough to do anything in that fog, however, and lent just enough light for them to see without tripping over each other.

What they were seeing, with surprising clarity, was more Ravens, lots of them.

They were all laid out on the ground, barely breathing. They'd checked the first few they'd come across to see if they were even alive, and found them to be breathing, but just barely. To them this was a sign that things outside were getting worse, and that they had to hurry. It was difficult to progress, while ignoring all of the Raven's however. All of their coloured cloaks were standing out brightly despite the reduced light, it was like walking amidst a rainbow. They numbered in the dozens, all of them close to death. But it was from one of these Ravens that they obtained the last piece of the puzzle, the directions to their final destination.

On their way by, a hand rose from the ground, with a great effort from its owner. It was one of the Raven's, in an army green cloak. Starfire floated over to her side and supported Raven's head in her lap. This one was destined to end up like the others, it was just moments away.

"Stay still, you're very sick." Starfire said, trying to comfort her. It was an exercise in futility, however. They knew where this Raven was headed, and they were powerless to stop it.

"No...I'll keep...fighting..." she said weakly.

"Do you know where the great mirrors are?" Robin asked. He suddenly felt very childish for asking the question. Or perhaps, not childish...just like he should be in the next Lord of the Rings movie. Great Mirrors...yeah, boy wonder, right next to the mines of Mooria and the Misty Mountains...

"They're...that way..." She said, motioning weakly towards a distant mountain range.

"...But that's so far..." Beast Boy said. Everyone followed his gaze to the mountains, barely visible in the failing light.

"Maybe I can...help." Said the Raven in green. Cyborg remembered seeing this one before. It was Raven's fighting spirit. No wonder she was holding on when all the rest were essentially comatose.

"Azarath, metrion, Zinthos!" She said with surprising gusto. A black bubble encased them all, and they all started to float towards the mountains.

Actually, float made what they were doing sound slow. Really, they _flew_, very, very fast. They were at the mountain range in mere moments. The black bubble burst, and with the exception of Starfire, who floated to the ground at her leisure, the group fell with a crash.

The Green clad Raven was barely breathing, her eyes were narrowed to slits, with vacant eyes barely showing through. Robin checked for a pulse, and found a weak one. Just like the others. They left her there–it was all they could do–and proceeded up the path that had to lead to the mirrors.

"Why are they all dying?" Starfire asked. Robin replied with the only answer he could think to give, the one they all knew, the one they all felt was true.

"Because Raven is dying."


	5. Chapter 5

17.

They travelled the path as it wound around the mountains, it was perilous at times, and the weather was starting to go south, a thunder storm brewed over head. When a particularly large, loud bolt of lightning knifed its way across the blackened sky, Starfire covered her head with her hands and stopped walking. She didn't say anything, but made a small yelping noise and started shaking. Robin went to her and coaxed her forward with a friendly hand on her shoulder, and another one of his smiles, this one as genuine as he could possibly make it given the situation. They had no choice, they had to get to those mirrors, and more than that, they had to hurry.

"Here's a good question," Cyborg said, finally adding voice to a thought he'd been having since they'd found about these mirrors, which they assumed were Raven's eyes. "What are we supposed to see when we get to these 'mirrors'?" Everyone thought about it, and they all came to the same conclusion;

"Well..." Robin said, thinking hard. "We can see what she is seeing, it has to be better than nothing."

"Yeah...yeah." Cyborg said. His voice trailed off towards the end, he clearly wasn't convinced, but no one could think of anything more definitive. In a way, none of them were convinced that this was the correct course of action, but they were out of options.

And out of time.

The path began to open up, growing wider and wider, until it was wider than your average football field. There was something in the air, too. Something new, something hot. It rushed at them, then stopped, only to start again a moment later, and continued on like that, getting hotter and more pronounced the further they proceeded. Cyborg changed his arm back to its cannon function, he sensed something was up.

They all knew what they were feeling on them was breath. The breath of something huge.

Then they found the mirrors, but by the time they did, none of them even cared.

Sitting beside the mirrors, in a massive throne that was carved out of the very mountain, was Raven's anger. It was his breath that they felt, so strong now that it blew Starfire's hair out of shape. It was a giant red demon, and both Cyborg and Beast Boy knew exactly what he was capable of, and so were on high alert. He didn't appear to be doing anything, however, just sitting there, gripping the arm rests of his stone throne.

"Little parasites..." he said. He spoke in an exaggerated whisper, and what looked like smoke curled from his nostrils.

"Little children, trying to put things right..."

"Yo, you gonna give us a hard time, Big Red?" Cyborg levelled his cannon arm right at the heavily breathing demon. The rest of the Titans questioned his motives, since that gun against a being of the Demon's size was about akin to trying to take down a hyena with a water gun. The Demon made no aggressive moves, though. Just sat in his throne, hardly moving an inch.

"I have not the power to fight, little children. Not anymore...Hrrgh!" He winced in pain, screwing his eyes tight and balling his fists. The smoke was pouring from his nose and mouth, like his guts were on fire. He started to shrink, slowly, and violently, and in quite a lot of pain, from his expression. Before long, his shape started to change as well, and it became obvious that he wasn't just shrinking, he was becoming something else all together. Robin thought that it looked a little like he was a balloon with a fast leak, something from the Macy Day Parade from hell.

He kept on shrinking, and changing shape, until he was the same size as the Titans, laying at the base of his massive throne. And by the time he was that size, he was not a he any longer, he was a she. It was another Raven, in a blood red cloak, and four red, glowing eyes.

"Go...little children...for soon this world will end." With that, her head fell to the ground, and she lay on her back, motionless, one her arms draped over her mid-section, and nothing moving.

They tried not to dwell on the display they'd just witnessed, but it wasn't easy. They each slowly pulled themselves from the presence of the new Raven–who was looking about the same as the other's they'd seen along the way– and ran the rest of the way towards the mirrors.

18.

The mirrors were massive and almond shaped, set into simple wooden frames. They were at least twenty feet tall a piece, and in order to get a good look at them, they had to stand several yards away, and even then, all they were seeing was a total blackout.

"Uhhh...maybe she has her eyes closed..." Offered Beast Boy. They all guessed that he was probably right.

"Well, whata we do now?" Asked Cyborg. The question was directed at Robin.

"We wait," Robin replied. He crossed his arms and stared intently at the mirrors, as if he were trying to will them to do something with his mind.

19.

"Wake up, my child." Gavrosh had his bottle again, but instead of offering it to Raven, he splashed it up into her face, stirring her from unconsciousness.

"It's time for the last shock you'll ever remember." Raven's eyes opened widely, as he quickly pulled out the remote and switched his glance from it, to Raven, wearing a horribly sadistic smile. He reached up and grabbed a handful of her hair.

"It won't kill you, but I don't expect you'll wake up again after this one. So I will take this opportunity to say goodbye." He took a step back and wiggled his fingers at her, pressing the switch he held in his other hand.

20.

"NO!" The group yelled. They saw the whole thing, every horrid word spoken by that man...Gavrosh. He looked at her, Raven, the girl he was about to shock into permanent unconsciousness, with a look closely reminiscent of restrained joy. The way he touched her, smiled at her, he was getting some kind of perverse pleasure from what he was doing. Then, only to do what he did without any ceremony or bracing time.

It was then they found out where the screaming and shaking and electricity from earlier had come from.

It all happened again, but everything was worse. The screaming was louder, from deeper inside, and was the most desperate and scared sound any of them had ever heard, ever. The electricity hung in the air like ropes of blue and white, dancing this way and that, and didn't stop for a whole thirty seconds, at the very least. And then, like the last time, everything stopped, and left the Titans in a dusty pile on the ground.

The mirrors were once again a deep, dark black colour.

"Raven!" Starfire yelled, when the dust had settled.

"We gotta get out of here, right now!" Beast Boy said.

"Ok, everyone calm down." Robin said. He wanted to get out and find Raven as much, no, _more_ than them, he was sure of that. But first things first.

"What did we see in the mirrors? There had to be something that can help us." Robin was trying desperately to remember what was there, besides that man...Gavrosh. There was him, but what was he surrounded by?

"Computers. There were a lot of computers, it was high tech stuff too." Cyborg said.

"And how does that help us?" Robin asked, trying to get the team to the end of this road, and fast.

"Hmmm...a place like that, its gotta eat up electricity pretty fast," Cyborg said. "If we look up the places that have been gobbling down the power the past couple of days, we might get lucky."

It was a good theory, it was all they had, and they were out of time.

"Good, now lets get out of here!" Robin said triumphantly. All the Titans rushed for the exit; then they stopped when they realized they were all going in different directions.

None of them knew the way out.

They all looked at each other for a moment, in utter confusion.

"It's...that...way..." It was the Raven in the red cloak. She had just enough energy left to raise her hand and point, before falling back into the coma that had stricken the others like her. They wasted no time, and ran off in the direction she'd pointed. They all knew they had only minutes to track Raven down, or they might never get her back again.

A few minutes of frantic running later, they reached what must have been the exit. It was a cave that burrowed deep into the mountains, and in its distance was a point of light. With no discussion or apprehension they ran in, and were soon introduced to a familiar site, the metal edge of the mirror, this time flying past them in the other direction. They had made it back to the tower, but now the real test began.

21.

Cyborg had been punching keys at the computer for nearly twenty minutes, and that was too long for Robin's liking. He was pacing furiously back and forth, while Starfire and Beast Boy had settled into a restless calm on the couch. None of them were thinking of anything but Raven. Now they knew first hand the danger she was in, they knew the time to find her was now, because there would be no more times after this.

"Anything?"

"No, not since the last time you asked."

On the screen was a birds eye view of the whole city and surrounding area, with red dots signifying possible candidates for where Raven might be held. There were twenty in all, which was about nineteen more than what they were all hoping for. Robin started to apply his brain to narrowing down the list.

"Ok, well this one, this one and this one are all owned by the city. Get rid of those." Seventeen to go.

"These four are too far away, he was travelling with Raven, remember. These are at least a two hour drive, out in the middle of nowhere. I'll take them off," Cyborg said.

Down to thirteen.

"Ok, now eliminate all of the places that have been using power consistently over the course of the year. The place we want would have been using tons of power in only the last few days." Robin said. Cyborg hit a few more keys and eleven of the lights went out. Two to go.

"Ok, now this machine he has Raven hooked into, it looked like it was only active for a few seconds at a time," Robin said, as Beast Boy and Starfire had joined him at the computer and were looking anxiously over Cyborg's shoulder. "Eliminate the one that uses its power at greater increments than thirty seconds at a time." Cyborg hit the keys, and a second later, one of the two red lights winked out, leaving one. Cyborg brought up a picture of the building, along with its owner. His face was instantly recognized by the group. It was Gavrosh.

"That's it! Everyone, lets go!" They all took off toward the door.

22.

"I really would like to thank you, my dear..." Gavrosh was lightly fingering the remote which he was about to press. Doing so would, effectively, end Raven's life. She was beyond caring, though, and beyond response. She was hardly breathing, her eyes closed, her chin resting on her chest. It didn't stop Gavrosh from carrying on a pleasant conversation with her, however.

"I must thank you because I could not have done this without you. You have given your life for the cause, and I won't forget that." He was pacing slowly back and forth, trying to live in the moment. His machine was nearly charged, one last dose of Raven's power, the last she had, and it would be able to bring his body back from the void, and he would be whole again. It was a good thing too, this body he inhabited was decaying. It was taking all of his strength to keep his face and hands from drying out and dying with the rest of him.

He was determined to stretch this moment as long as he could, it had been so long since he'd felt the sublime pleasure associated with taking a life. He supposed that, though he'd been gone a long time, that his love of murder and violence would help him to fit in, it always did. It was human nature, after all. One of the many instincts we fight so hard to suppress. He was not evil, no; he was enlightened. The feeling of satisfaction he was about to get from killing this young girl, it was not separating him from the majority, it was going to make him a part of the majority. Everyone only wishes they had a chance like this. When he was emperor, when his empire was re-established and everyone bent their knee to him again, he intended to re-live this moment as many times as sanity would allow.

Oh well, he thought, no time to dwell. It was time to act.

BANG!

The door flew apart behind him, sending shards this way and that. In its place stood a group he had not expected to see. It was the rest of the Titans, and boy, did they look mad.

"Leave her alone!" Starfire yelled as she flew into the room. She sent a shower of green energy toward him, causing him to drop the remote. He was fast enough to avoid the brunt of the attack, however.

"Titan's, go!" Robin commanded. They all rushed towards him. Beast Boy turned into a wolf, running at full tilt, baring its gleaming fangs. Gavrosh responded by removing a straight razor from his pocket and taking cover behind the unconscious Raven. He grabbed her hair and pulled her head back, exposing her neck, which is where he put the straight razor, threatening to slit her throat.

"That's far enough Titans. I might not have all of my powers back yet, but I don't need them to kill this one. Not one step further." Beast Boy turned back into himself, he was the closest to Raven and Gavrosh.

"No, don't hurt her!" He pleaded.

"Oh, I think it is a little late for that, my green friend. Now stay right where you are!" He motioned with the razor towards Beast Boy then returned it to Raven's throat. He nicked her, just a little, and a small trickle of blood started down her neck.

"Now, we have a bit of a situation here, don't we?" He looked at each of the Titans, straight into their eyes. They all saw insanity on his face. They'd all seen it before in a few of their enemies, but never had it been so pronounced. None of them moved an inch.

"I think perhaps discretion is the better part of valour." He reached into his pocket and pulled out several round metal balls.

"We will meet again Titans, mark my words." He tossed the metal balls on the ground and they exploded into huge puffs of smoke. The room quickly filled up, lowering visibility to absolutely nothing. By the time it had cleared, Gavrosh was gone, leaving Raven behind, still connected to all the machinery.

"Quick we must get her down, now!" Starfire shouted, flying over to her and giving a tug at the machinery that held her.

"Beast Boy, you try and get her down, everyone else, after him!" Beast Boy ran up and took Starfire's place, ripping and tearing at the machinery around Raven's arms and the rest of the group took off out the back door, where they hoped Gavrosh was making a hasty retreat.

23.

While the group rounded the corner in a rapid pursuit of Gavrosh, Beast Boy clawed with his bare, human shaped hands at the parts that held Raven. He was not making an ounce of headway, but was beyond rational thought at that point. His proximity to Raven let him see first hand how bad she really was; her eyes weren't entirely closed, but were open just a little, letting some of the white show through, and the breath he felt on the nape of his neck was weak and shallow. It drove him nuts, and so he was not getting anywhere in his delirium.

"Come on Raven, you just have to be alright!" He threw a glance down to her side, and saw a computer screen with some sort of control panel under it. He leapt down from the machinery and took a good look at the screen, at the same time trying to clear his head a little; at least enough to put together some kind of rational thought.

_Ok, BB, get a grip. Won't do her any good if you can't even think straight._

On the screen were two pictures, one was the outline of what had to be Raven, with a line inside of it, which was near her feet. It was like a water filled statue, with only a drop left in it. Beside it was what looked like the picture of a basin, filled with water. It was a solid elongated rectangle, with small lines running up on of the long sides. It was filled nearly to its top. Under them both were statistics and readings that Beast Boy could not make heads nor tails of, but assumed they gave some insight as to what was going on inside of Raven, and inside of the machines around her. He supposed it meant they'd got there just in time, or perhaps, just a little too late.

Raven looked so bad...so sick.

He wheeled around in a desperate attempt to find something to get her out, and for once in his life, one of his irrational acts of desperation was finally answered.

On the floor, about ten feet away, was Gavrosh's remote control.

He ran over and picked it up, having to first turn it over to get to the side with all the buttons on it. He'd hoped it would be simple (press this to let the poor girl go...or something like that) but found that not to be the case. What he found instead was a big red button, which as far as he was concerned was Raven's 'kill switch', and not to be messed with, and nine buttons under it, numbered one thru nine.

_Great...a password._

His worry over Raven's condition got steadily worse as he realized that he needed to know the correct combination to get her out. His heart sank a great deal, for he was never that good with this technical stuff. He thought about going to get Cyborg, but thought better of it, Raven might not have that long. Finally, he came to a decision; enough with the technical stuff, it was smashing time. He'd shied away from the idea at first, thinking he might hurt Raven in her fragile state, but he had to try, there was nothing else for it...or was there? If he turned into a gorilla and just bashed the hell out of the machine, it would probably click open eventually, but it might kill Raven in the process. But if he destroyed the machine from _within_, it might release her, and it would a much gentler way of doing it.

_That's it, that's what needs to be done._

He turned into a beetle, one with large pincers and a desire to eat as much metal as it could in a short period of time. He crawled into a small crack in the machines, and started to shred every wire he came across. Every circuit he found he chewed through, everything that wasn't nailed down he ripped off, destroyed, or otherwise incapacitated. He kept going and going, and tearing down all that was in front of him, until the entire structure rumbled and slid.

He got it.

He ran back out, and turned back into himself just in time for Raven to fall into his arms, deadweight.

_Congratulations, Beast Boy, now what?_

Now, he had to run. The hospital was not far away, and that was the only place Raven could be right now.

He turned into one of his favourite forms, a massive gorilla, so big that he could hold Raven in the crook of one arm, but favorites and pleasure's and reasons for being all took a backseat for Beast Boy then. Then he didn't have a reason for being, he wasn't a gorilla or anything else. All he was, was a vessel. He was a transporter of most precious cargo, and that was all he could think about; beating a hasty retreat to the hospital, before Raven died in his arms.

He knew he would make it...it was just a little further...he could make it...


	6. Chapter 6

24.

beep beep beep

Starfire watched the little dot work its way across the screen, jumping every time Raven's heart beat. How curious, those beeps, the dot, nothing like that back home. Her ever curious mind forced her eyes to wander, and her thoughts to stray, there was just so much in a hospital ICU ward that was new to her.

"The doctor says he doesn't really know what is wrong with her, and that she's in a coma." Beast Boy said. They'd expected about as much. They, at least, knew why she was in the state she was in, though for how long was a mystery to them, as well.

Gavrosh had gotten away, though they trailed him for a while, in the dark of the night, mixed with their blind rage, he'd gotten away. They were all a little ashamed, but given Raven's dire situation, they put that aside for the moment.

"So what are we supposed to do?" Cyborg asked. Everyone assumed he was speaking to Robin.

"I don't know...I just don't know." Was his reply. None of them could take their eyes off of Raven, whose breathing was still shallow and raspy. Robin thought that the heart monitor should be beeping a lot more than it was. Then suddenly, it did.

beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee... One solid beep, and everyone but Starfire leapt to their feet.

"Yo doc!" Cyborg yelled, two doctors and a nurse were already streaming through the door.

"What is happening?" Starfire asked nervously.

"Back up please, give the doctor room to work." The nurse shoved them out of the way, as the two doctors crowded over Raven, looking like they knew exactly what to do.

"No rhythm, no heartbeat, nurse get the crash cart." Tears stood in all their eyes.

"Clear!" POW Raven jumped as she was shocked.

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...

"Clear!" POW

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...

"Charge to 350! Clear!" POW

Beep beep beep

One of the doctors pushed his hand into the side of neck.

"Ok, I've got a pulse." There was a communal sigh of relief from everyone, including the nurse and the other doctor. When they were at least a little sure that her heart wasn't going to stop again, one of the doctors walked over to the Titans.

"Your friend is very sick," he started. He looked like he was being sincere, but also like he was a practised hand at these sorts of conversations. "Are you sure you don't know what happened to her?"

"It's difficult to explain. We'll know more when we catch the guy who did it to her." Robin addressed the doctor on behalf of the group.

"Well, I'll leave you to it then. You're friend will be well cared for. We here at St. Catherine's owe you Titans a lot."

"Thank you, doctor." They exchanged a handshake and the doctors left, speaking to the nurse about something to do with dosages.

"Ok, so now what?" Cyborg asked again.

"Gavrosh..." Robin said, almost snarling in anger.

"What about Raven?" Beast Boy asked. Robin's looked of rage melted away, as his thoughts were again drawn to his broken friend on the bed behind him. He looked up, his features and voice noticeably softer.

"Starfire, stay here and look after her."

Starfire made no verbal reply, but nodded gravely.

"The rest of us should go back to his lab, there might be something there we can use to track him." Cyborg said. His eyes darted to Robin, to Raven and back again.

"Good luck, to all of you, my friends." Starfire said, gathering up as much optimism as the situation would allow.

"Star, if there's any change. If she wakes up, or if..."

"I know, I will call you."

"Thanks. Titans, let's go."

25.

"Come on, we'll tear this thing apart if we have to." The Titans were back at Gavrosh's building, looking for any clues as to where he might have gone. They didn't even know where to begin. Any forensic evidence would be fairly useless in finding his location, and everything in the lab appeared to be stolen from various different places around town, also no help in tracking him. They–Robin, Cyborg and Beast Boy–were spread to all corners of the lab, looking under everything, over everything, around everything, but there was absolutely nothing of significance. Beast Boy sniffed as a dog, crawled as a bug, flew as a bird to the distant corners of the room, but nothing...nothing was presenting itself.

They weren't going to leave until that nothing became something, however.

Beast Boy–now as a fly–realized, almost as an afterthought, that he was standing on that same screen he'd looked at when he first released Raven. And more than that, he was standing on the image of the well that Raven's powers had been dumped into. Then, a realization.

It was now showing itself as empty.

"Hey guys, check this out!"

Robin and Cyborg hurried over to his side, as he grinned triumphantly at what he had found. But as happy as he was, his grin quickly disappeared when he realized that they had no idea what he was talking about.

"Listen guys, this thing said that it was full of...something it had taken out of Raven the last time I was here. Now look." He pointed at the two pictures, the one of the empty Raven silhouette and the one of the empty tank, in a desperate attempt to explain what he was on about. After a couple of minutes, Cyborg looked like he was catching on.

"So this thing sucked Raven dry, then stored her energy, is that what you're saying?"

"Yes!" Beast Boy said, obviously relieved.

"So if her power was here, then where is it now? Could it have dissipated?" Robin asked.

"No, I don't think so. It wouldn't be a very effective storage device if it let out the juice that fast. It had to have been transferred out." Robin thought about this for a second, eventually reaching a conclusion that had occurred to Cyborg some moments earlier.

"So he'd have to have a connection to a computer somewhere else, wouldn't he?" Robin said rhetorically. Cyborg smiled.

"Just give me a second."

He started by opening a panel just underneath the screen, exposing a network of wires, of all colour and size and started looking through them. The ones he knew were useless he ripped out and threw away. He to, felt time working against him, and his stricken friend, and was starting to panic, just a little. Finally he grabbed a wire that he didn't immediately wrench from its place, and instead carefully unplugged it from the computer above.

"Bingo."

He plugged it into a port on his arm. Beast Boy had always been curious about that one; he'd seen Cyborg interface with a dozen different computers, and they always seemed to plug right in to some port he had on his person. He made a point to learn more about computers; that had been two times in the past couple of hours where he'd wished he knew just what the hell was going on.

"Ok, looks like the power...or whatever it was he took out of Raven, was digitized and stored on this computer." Beast Boy and Robin nodded, but not approvingly.

They knew that part, or at least assumed as much.

"Then, after he gave us the slip in the allies, he went and downloaded the...uh, stuff, onto a laptop computer."

"A laptop? That means he could be anywhere!" Robin said. His heart sank and he quickly lost hope of ever finding Gavrosh. The thought sent more anger boiling through his blood.

"Not necessarily," Cyborg said. "See, I can track the laptop, as long as its on. And it is." He said this moving towards the door.

"Then let's get out of here!" Beast Boy said enthusiastically. Desperately, but enthusiastically.

They all ran out to Cyborg car, which they'd left idling in the hope they might have to use it in a hurry. With Cyborg behind the wheel, they took off into the night, a renewed sense of purpose in all of them.

26.

It was not what they were expecting, it wasn't what they thought was even a possibility. But judging from the fat bundle of wires fed through one of the walls, it was the correct destination.

What they'd found, was a shack. A big, hollowed out shack.

Just outside the city, where the road met the woods, there was an old hunting shack, with termite eaten boards for walls and an old chimney made of cobblestones that was quickly falling apart.

How quaint.

"Look, according to my readings, the laptop that downloaded Raven's power off that computer is in that shack." Cyborg was looking at a screen on his arm, and speaking with confidence. Robin and Beast Boy both knew better than to question him on something like this, they didn't have a prayer.

"Alright, then let's go in, but be careful."

They walked to the door a lot slower than they probably should have. Raven, and all of her problems seemed very far away, there was something about the house that just didn't seem right, like they were walking out of their lives and straight into a cheaply made horror movie. Another few steps and a chainsaw would be hurtling at their necks, they just knew it.

What they saw in the cabin, having opened the door, made them wish for a moment it was only a freak in a hockey mask and a machete.

Inside was another collection of stolen computer equipment, chewed together and somehow made to function, with Gavrosh at the controls and his laptop plugged into an outlet that linked it to the main computer. Tucked into the corner of the room was an odd, glass chamber, with what looked like the corpse of an old man laying at the bottom of it. There was a fog rolling across the floor, and spreading.

"You're too late, Titans!" Gavrosh said without turning around. "Now witness the rebirth of a GOD!" He turned.

His face was an emaciated parody of itself, dried out and stretched over the skull beneath it like old leather. There were no eyes, just hollowed out cavities, and his mouth had fallen into a permanent grimace.

Then he fell to the ground. Robin thought that he had just died in front of them. He was to motionless to be simply unconscious.

Then, the corpse inside the glass chamber began to stir, his eyes blazing red. His garb was of a strange design, purple and gold stitching with huge shoulder pads and very baggy pants. He looked vaguely like a warlord out of an old Japanese ninja movie, Beast Boy thought, but was far to frightened to it say out loud.

"Prepare yourselves, for the void!" He spoke like a snake hissed, in a harsh whisper which cut at the Titans. He raised his hand and a blue bolt of lightning crashed from his fingertips.

"Titans, go!" Robin said as he narrowly avoided being roasted. A hole opened up in the wall behind them. Cyborg let loose with a barrage from his arm cannon, which Gavrosh blocked by way of some manner of force field, projected from his hand. Robin dashed across the room and leapt into the air, meaning to lay a kick into Gavrosh's jaw, but before that kick could connect, he stopped, and was held there, floating in mid-air.

"Do you really think that you mere mortals can measure up to the power of a true Emperor?" He turned his outstretched hand and Robin revolved around in the air, until he was upside down. "You are not even worth wasting my power on." He whipped his hand across his chest, and in turn Robin went sailing across the room, crashing into Cyborg.

Beast Boy lunged, turning into a giant octopus as he did. This caught Gavrosh on his blindside and Beast Boy managed to wrap his tentacles around the sorcerer, temporarily cocooning him in slimy foulness.

"Whatever you plan on doing, you'd better do it fast!" Beast Boy shouted, struggling to keep Gavrosh subdued.

"Robin, keep him distracted, I need to get a look at that computer." Cyborg said in a low-toned voice.

"Sure, that's easy for you to say."

Robin removed his staff from his belt and extended it to its full length, running towards Gavrosh as he finally managed to throw Beast Boy off of him. Cyborg snuck his way over to the main terminal on the computer, hoping for some sort of strategy to develop.

What he saw was a bunch of gibberish, at least to him, facts and figures and numbers he couldn't understand. He punched a few keys and eventually brought up a different screen, this one with actual words, and pictures as well.

Now this, he understood.

He read as fast as he could, while the din of the battle behind him grew. Either Gavrosh had failed to notice him, which would have been difficult given the size of the room they were in, or Robin and Beast Boy were actually putting a dent in him, and he was too busy fighting them off. Either way, Cyborg was too busy to turn and look.

Meanwhile, Robin and Beast Boy were having problems of their own. Gavrosh was deflecting most of their attacks before they could even administer them. He did, however, appear to have a problem splitting his attention in too many ways, and so keeping him distracted was easy enough, as long as they could stay mobile. Robin didn't even look at what Cyborg was doing, convinced that doing so would jinx him. Eventually, Cyborg spoke up.

"Guys! This computer is still storing a good deal of Raven's power, more than half of what he took!"

Robin looked away from the fight for a moment.

"Really?" He was thrown backwards with a wave of Gavrosh's hand.

"Yes, that's correct. You see, over indulgence is a sin I have in abundance." Gavrosh hissed, with a smile. "After my first treatment of that girl, I had all the power I needed, but torturing her was such sweet pleasure. To see her suffer, it was...beautiful." He licked his lips.

"You mean, you tortured her for two days straight, just because you felt like it?" Robin asked, yelled really. Beast Boy could see the flecks of spittle come out of his mouth. In truth it was how he felt as well, and felt a growl emanating from his throat, he stared at Gavrosh with feelings of death and maiming in his head (completely un-hero like, but he was past caring about things like ethics and moral structures). Gavrosh made no verbal reply, just nodded maniacally.

"You bastard!" Robin rushed him again, tossing a boomerang and several of his exploding projectiles as he went. Beast Boy ran as well, turning into a man sized dinosaur, a raptor, and screeched a battle cry into the air. All of Robins projectiles hit their mark, but did little to Gavrosh, who shrugged the blows off, then Robin came at him with a punch, square on the jaw, which in the smoke and after effects of his previous attack, caught Gavrosh by surprise. Beast Boy met the staggered Gavrosh with teeth gnashing and claws cutting the air, and so the fight continued.

Cyborg, meanwhile, had more work to do.

He was pounding at the keyboard in front of him, trying to put a theory to the test. From what he saw, the machine had about 67 left, of whatever it sucked out of Raven, and so whatever Gavrosh just did before they'd gotten there, could be done again. He just had to figure out how.

"Enough!" Gavrosh yelled, and clenched his fists tight enough that all of the tendons and veins in his wrists jumped out into high contrast and shadow. They were twitching. Then, a shockwave flew out of him, knocking Robin and Beast Boy flying, and tearing a good portion of the roof of the shack away, letting a brisk cool wind rush in.

"Just keep him busy for a second longer!" Cyborg yelled over the din of the wind and of Gavrosh's wicked magic.

"Yeah...sure...no problem..." Robin managed to utter, half embedded into the wall.

"You will be on the slab right beside these two, metal man! Just you wait!" Gavrosh yelled, pointing a finger at him. Cyborg only heard half of it, for he managed to find something of profound interest, and his attention was drawn completely to it. He quickly yanked a cord, similar to the one from the first lab, and plugged it into his arm. He downloaded some of the information, and one program that would hopefully come in handy in the next minute or so. He ran over to Beast Boy and Robin, who were just picking themselves up.

"Ok guys, here's the deal," he whispered, quickly. "This guy is still weak from wherever he's been spending his time, so he isn't hitting us with everything, that won't last long though." Beast Boy elected to attack Gavrosh again; the image of Raven being wracked with pain for a day and a half was too strong in his mind for him to do anything else. Gavrosh, who started with an impressive flurry, seemed to be weakening. He was now occupied fully in repelling Beast Boys assault.

"Perfect..." Robins said as a stray piece of wood was thrown straight at his head. He ducked out of the way.

"But here's the good part," Cyborg continued, "if we can get him back into that chamber, I can open the same portal he did, using the energy that was left over. It should send him back to where he came from."

"Should?" Beast Boy said. Cyborg shrugged.

It was all they had, so they stood for it.

"Right, Titans, get him in that chamber!" Robin said, motioning with his staff, which had a noticeable bend in it.

They rushed as a group, Cyborg laying into Gavrosh with his cannon, Robin throwing another boomerang, Beast Boy took to the sky as an eagle, and dove straight towards the evil sorcerer.

He managed to block Cyborg's cannon blast, but doing so opened him up to the boomerang, which caught him squarely in the chest. He staggered back a step, just in time for Beast Boy to drop down and open a gash in Gavrosh's cheek with one, razor sharp claw. His hand shot up to stem the flow of blood.

"Ahhhh!" He yelled.

"Come on, as one!" Robin yelled and started into a run, Cyborg followed him, and Beast Boy met them, this time as a Ram, with huge curled horns. They all met Gavrosh at the same time, Robin vaulting into the air with his staff and kicking, Beast Boy charging, and Cyborg laying a shoulder into him. He went sailing into the chamber, smashing into its far side and cracking the glass. He fell to the floor in a crumpled pile.

"Now Cyborg!" Robin yelled. Cyborg hit a button on his arm, and the door of the chamber slammed shut, just as Gavrosh was standing up.

"No! I won't go back!" Gavrosh started to pound the glass, and it started to crack, worse and worse. Beast Boy thought momentarily that perhaps Gavrosh might have better luck if he used one of those fancy spells and simply shattered the glass, but then put the thought out of his mind. Gavrosh was panicking, and was not acting as he should, but that was all to their advantage, and even a thought to the contrary might change that situation.

"Make it quick Cyborg!" Robin yelled, as the wind continued to howl over head.

"It's done." Cyborg said, very simply, with a smile. He pressed a button on his arm, and a rumble started in the chamber. Gavrosh started to look all around him, with an unbelievably horrified look on his face. His eyes, which were once gleaming with a blood red glow, where now a dark brown, with the whites standing out as they grew wider with fear. His face ran with sweat that wasn't there a moment ago, and he started to pound both his fists on the glass of the chamber.

Then, the portal opened.

It was big and purple, and swirled like grape juice running down the drain, Gavrosh turned to face it like God himself was there, looking over his shoulder.

"NOOOO!" It looked like he was slowly turning into liquid, joining the swirling portal behind him, starting at his head and quickly working down. His screams echoed into the void, and were soon muffled by the closing portal. It was all over so fast, and yet it was so totally effective. Gavrosh was gone.

Then his old body started to move.

The gaunt face loosened, and became as it was when the Titans first layed eyes on it; that of a young man, and he slowly stood.

"I'm not through yet, T-

Robin punched him full and solidly on the side of his face.

"Yeah yeah yeah."

The police were there in record time, and quickly rounded up Gavrosh and threw him into the back of one of their cars. The Titans did not stop them from being too rough–the Titans were already gone. They didn't stick around for the usual euphoria of victory to wash over them. They only had one thought

_Raven_


	7. Final Chapter

27.

They'd been taking turns watching her, while the others slept in another room. It had been four days since they'd brought her in and little had changed. They found out that she had a fractured ankle, along with all of the various bruises and scrapes her ordeal had lent her. Her leg was in a cast now, and only added to her appearance of sickness. Beast Boy sat by her side, slowly nodding off despite himself. It had been a long week, and it was starting to take its toll on him. Apparently, they were holding Gavrosh in the maximum security wing of the local prison, which meant that unless he had a nuclear bomb stashed somewhere on his person, he wasn't going anywhere. That was a very relieving feeling to have.

He'd done quite a lot of damage in the time before they'd caught him, however, the evidence of which was in the bed in front of Beast Boy. The doctors were speaking true, though, when they said Raven would be well cared for, to the point where Robin had to plead with the doctors and nurses to pay more attention to their other patients.

Beast Boy, with all those thoughts and more running through his head, then fell asleep.

An hour passed.

"B...Beast Boy?"

His eyes creaked open a little, and he suddenly felt an awful crick in his neck. His eyes opened the rest of the way to see Raven, awake, her own purple eyes open halfway.

"Raven!" He said, in restrained enthusiasm.

"What...happened?" She said groggily. Beast Boy described, as best he could, the events of the past week. She remembered parts, and immediately upon hearing them wished she didn't.

"Oh geez, I have to get the others!" Beast Boy said after a particularly un-awkward silence. Truth be told, he was lost in those purple eyes, the ones he'd waited forever to see again. Now, however, he knew the rest of the group would want to know that she was awake, and so he stood, placing a hand on the edge of her bed to push off from. She covered his hand with her own, and looked up at him.

"Wait..." She said wearily. Confused, but not a bit upset, Beast Boy sat back down.

"I...remember," she continued, "a voice in the darkness, after Gavrosh had knocked me out for the last time...after I thought I was dead. It was you. You freed me, brought me here, didn't you?" She wasn't asking, but stating a point. Beast Boy made no reply but for a sideways glance and a small upturn of the sides of his mouth.

She squeezed Beast Boy's hand, and smiled a little. She didn't feel that feeling inside, that one that meant she was pushing her emotions too hard. There was nothing trying to escape her, at least not now, not until her powers reasserted themselves. She sat up.

"Thank you." She wrapped her arms around Beast Boy and lay her head on his shoulder. After a moment, he did the same, and held her tightly. She felt weak in his arms, like she was made of glass, and he was afraid to squeeze too hard. He could feel her breath on his neck, it was still weak...she was still so weak. He suddenly became very thankful to whoever watched out for the Titans, that mystery force out there in the world that protected them. The one he owed his life too, and the one that saved Raven. He thanked it, and as he did, he moved his hand to the back of Raven's head, running his fingers through her hair.

"Thank God you're all right, Raven." He felt a tear roll down his cheek.

They don't know how long they stayed like that, but not a second of it will go unremembered in either of their minds.

28.

Just as Raven and Beast Boy managed to separate themselves, a nurse stuck her head in.

"Oh, you're awake!" She disappeared for a moment, and then returned rolling a tray filled with choice hospital foods. The wobbling brick of green jello was particularly attractive.

"Oh...great." Raven said, in her usual listless voice. The nurse pushed the tray under her nose, and a particularly unappetizing smell wafted from the tray. It was meat...something, and there the similarity to food ended.

"It smells like something you cooked up." She said, looking up at Beast Boy, and smiling a little. She took up her fork and forced a mouthful down.

"Heeeeeey..." Beast Boy said, bending down and accidentally taking a deep whiff of the food. It smelled truly revolting, and though he was familiar with what meat, and meat substitute looked and smelled like when it was cooked, he would have been hard pressed to put the stuff in either category. Beast Boy was going to defend his culinary skills, but decided to try accomplish something he'd been working at for months, and never once achieved.

"Yeah, its got all the signs. Not quite meat, not quite vegetable..." Raven smiled, just a little, a twitch of the side of her mouth.

"...not quite food, not quite fit for human consumption." That did it. No longer able to help herself, Raven swallowed the mouthful of food, and did something she hadn't done in a long time.

There, in that hospital room, Raven laughed.

29.

"Oh! I am so glad you are awake and un-injured!" Starfire was hugging Raven...well, perhaps hugging is to gentle a word. She had her in a headlock, more than an embrace.

"I...won't...be...un-injured for long!" She gasped, struggling for breath. Starfire mercifully let go, and stood with a gigantic smile on her face.

"To celebrate the occasion of your waking, I will sing a traditional Tamaranian song of joy!" She took a big breath in, and just before the real torture began, Robin slapped a hand over her mouth, stifling the screams and warbles.

"I'm glad you're alright, Raven." He said, while Starfire fought to extricate herself from him.

Raven realised then, amidst a sea of smiles, that she really enjoyed being able to express herself a little more freely than usual. That returning those smiles, with a wide, bright one of her own, was a sublime pleasure that she didn't often have the chance to experience. With her powers on the fritz, she found the subtleties of every situation, those little eccentricities that had once passed her by, a smile or a chuckle; the ability to meet a situation with more than indifference and a sarcastic remark.

She liked it, and as much as she hated to admit it, Gavrosh had given it to her. Gavrosh, who sought to kill her to make himself whole again, Gavrosh who seemed to enjoy her suffering, to drink it like wine, or bathe in it like it somehow cleansed him. Gavrosh, who her friends, the Teen Titans, stopped. Gavrosh who now sat by himself in a little cell with no one but himself for company.

Gavrosh, who was getting better than he deserved.

She put him out of her mind for the moment, he was not worth her thoughts, or her worries, right now she was going to sit here, and enjoy the company of her friends, and laugh at their jokes and enjoy her life. For the first time, it was just that; her life, and she intended to make the absolute most of it.

Epilogue

The corridors were dimly lit, which was something of a morale issue, good to keep that sort of thing to a minimum in a place like this. The people who inhabited the building; murderer's, thieves, masochists–you know, the fun seekers–light was too good for them. Raven could feel their eyes on her as she walked by, they were staring at her through their cell bars, trying to decide what to make of her. Indeed, some of them were staring because she had been a direct cause of them being here in the first place. This one tried to rob a bank, that one tried to kidnap a millionaire's daughter. They all had one thing in common, though. On that day, not a one of them were attracting one iota of Raven's attention.

Her destination was decided a while ago.

She walked with the assistance of a cane, which after several weeks of recovery was the only ill effect of her dealings with Gavrosh (and the cane, too, would go soon, if she had her way about it). It clunked on the ground with her every other step, and the sound was getting tiresome. Apparently the break in her ankle was more severe than they'd at first realized, and even with her healing powers and the best medical treatment in the city, the area was still tender and not very load bearing, and so the cane, which for one reason or another, came from Cyborg. She assumed it was from some previous injury of his, but spent little time debating it. Ever since she'd gotten out of the hospital and regained full use of her powers she'd been dying to set something right that had gone horribly wrong.

See, Gavrosh was set to go on trial for kidnapping, attempted murder, and a wealth of other charges that the police had laid on him, just to get him imprisoned for longer. At that trial, Raven was going to have to act as witness for the prosecution. The whole thing would take months, and even then, since the Titans were the ones who collared him, a good lawyer could argue the sentence down to a fraction of what it was supposed to be.

Certainly shorter than he deserved.

Really, what he deserved was swift justice, like in the days of old. When they caught him ten thousand years ago they didn't screw around with a trial date or a jury or anything else. Just a curse, a banishment, and a trip to the eternal void, to wait out the next several dozen millenia in silence, all the time in the world to think about what he'd done. In fact, contemplation seemed to be the order of the day as Raven approached his cell. He had his head in his hands, like a statue, held in place by time.

Indeed, soon, he would be.

"Ahhh, come here to gloat?" He said, without looking up. Raven said nothing, merely stood, cane in hand, with her cloak dancing quietly around her. She had the hood pulled up, casting a shadow over the whole of her face. Only her mouth was visible.

"You know, it was nothing personal, really." He said, finally looking up at the girl. He thought she looked good, though the thought of seeing her dead on a table was still a tantalizing dream that sent shivers up his spine.

"No, nothing personal," was her simple, succinct reply. "And I would like you to know," she continued, "that what I have to do now is nothing personal, either." He stood, confused.

"I'd hate for what I am about to do to you to be misconstrued as vengeance, or vendetta. No, this is merely putting the wrong things right, Gavrosh. You...are...a wrong thing." She said the last words slowly, scrutinizing every syllable.

"What are you going to do?" There was an ounce of fear in his voice.

"'You shall be imprisoned, in the nothing, for a million moons. No more, no less'", Raven quoted from memory.

"You're here now, and a million moons have not passed. I simply came to rectify that." She raised her arms to her sides. This cast an ominous shadow in front of her, a relatively short, but impossibly black, shadow.

"No...no, you can't." Gavrosh said, trembling.

"Talk to me in 70,000 years about what I can't do."

Her mouth opened into a snarl.

"Azarath Metrion Zinthos!" She said the words that called her darkest powers into being, and after she did, her shadow started to move. To creep along the ground on its own, stretching from Raven's feet toward the broken sorcerer. Black energy pulsed around the room, and the din of it, the wind and electric crackling, was almost, but not quite enough to block out Gavrosh's screams. As the shadow stretched under him, he started to sink. Sink like he'd just stumbled onto a patch of quicksand, he fought to keep his legs out.

"Please, please no!" He yelled, sweat gleaming on his brow. Raven wasn't hearing him, because all her talk about this not being revenge, it was what it was; _talk_. This man almost killed her, and seemed to enjoy every minute, for that, she wasn't about to let him rot in any normal prison. No, there was a special made prison just waiting for him in another plain of existence, and she was fixing to make sure he got there.

He disappeared up to his neck.

"No...Nooooooo! Not the void, anything but the void, you mustn't, noooo-" his last moans were muffled by Raven's shadow, as first his mouth, then the top of his head both disappeared. Raven lowered her arms.

Gavrosh was gone.

But something sparkled on the floor, it was red and gold, and looked strikingly familiar. Raven made short work of the bars and went in to take a look. It was Gavrosh's ring, the one he'd used to get back to this plain. She lightly picked it up and surveyed it. It was almost flawless, a work of true craftsmenship. It, she thought, would make a fine addition to the evidence room. A permanent reminder of her fight.

She pocketed it and calmly left the cell.

When she exited the prison, the sun was out, not a cloud in the sky nor an ounce of imperfection in the air. It was a perfect day, and she was alive to experience it. Sure, a person had recently sought to end her life, but thanks to friends, she's pulled through. It was the closest she'd come to death, and now, she never felt so close to life.

The car was waiting, idling outside the jail. The rest of the Titans all waited inside. They knew what she was planning, she'd told them as much. After she'd shown them the ancient texts, the documentation of Gavrosh's imprisonment, it was easy for them to decide that he should be sent back there. Now, however, they weren't thinking of him any longer. He was back where he belonged, and his only means of escape was now in their possession.

"How did it go?" Cyborg asked as Raven slipped by his door, and circled the car to get into the passenger side.

"It's done." She said simply.

"Raven, I have just one word for you..." Beast Boy said, looking gravely up at her. She didn't make a reply, but returned his gaze expectantly.

"Pizza!" He smiled, and then she smiled in turn.

"Yeah, pizza sounds good right about now." She said, settling into the seat and leaning her head back. Cyborg pulled the car away from the curb, and drove back towards town. Raven rolled her window down a crack, letting just a little air in. She stooped down and rubbed her sore ankle, trying to get a kink out of it. Beast Boy bent down to meet her.

"You ok?" He looked at her with a worried look on his face. She looked at him, remembering their moment in the hospital room, and ran a hand through his hair. They stared at each other in that uncomfortable, bent over position for an almost undue amount of time, while Raven considered the answer to that question. There was only one word she could think of to describe herself then, with her friends, with her health. She looked into Beast Boy's green eyes, there near the floor of the car, and spoke it, with a small, but truly genuine smile on her face;

"Perfect."

The End


End file.
